Replication of "Making Outsiders' Votes Count: Detecting Electoral Fraud through a Natural Experiment" (Kentaro Fukumoto, Yusaku Horiuchi), American Political Science Review, Vol. 105, Issue 3, pp. 586-603, August 2011.  

* Description: Weak electoral registration requirements are commonly thought to encourage electoral participation, but may also promote electoral fraud. As one possibility, candidates and their supporters can more easily mobilize voters who do not reside within the district to register there fraudulently and vote for that district’s candidates. We statistically detect this classic type of electoral fraud for the first time, by taking advantage of a natural experimental setting in Japanese municipal elections. We argue that whether or not a municipal election was held in April 2003 can be regarded as an "as-if" randomly assigned treatment. A differences-in-differences analysis of municipality–month panel data shows that the increase in the new population just prior to April 2003 is significantly larger in treatment municipalities (with an election) than in control ones (without an election). The estimated effects are decisive enough to change the electoral results when the election is competitive. We argue that our approach -- "election timing as treatment" -- can be applied to investigate not only this type of electoral fraud but also electoral connections in other countries.

* Files included in this compressed replication package

Figure1
- Figure1.do
- Figure1.data
- Figure1.eps - generated after running Figure1.do

Figure2
- Figure2.do
- Figure2.data
- Figure2.eps - generated after running Figure2.do

Figure3-6
- apsr2011_1_merge.do (Stata do file, Step 1)
- apsr2011_2_analysis.do (Stata do file, Step 2)
- apsr2011_data1.dta (Stata data file, 1)- apsr2011_data2.dta (Stata data file, 2)- apsr2011_data3.dta (Stata data file, 3)
- apsr2011_data4.dta (Stata data file, 4)
- apsr2011.dta (Stata data file - generated after running apsr2011_1_merge.do)
- apsr2011.csv (CSV file — generated after running apsr2011_1_merge.do)
- apsr2011.log (LOG file — generated after running apsr2011_2_analysis.do)- Figure3.eps (EPS file — generated after running apsr2011_2_analysis.do)- Figure4.eps (EPS file — generated after running apsr2011_2_analysis.do)- Figure5.eps (EPS file — generated after running apsr2011_2_analysis.do)- Figure6.eps (EPS file — generated after running apsr2011_2_analysis.do)* Program: Stata Version 13.1

* Additional programs required: N.A.

* Process of Replication:
(1) Uncompress apsr2011.zip
(2) Set the working directory, which should be the folder with this ReadMe file
(3) Run Figure1.do to generate Figure 1.
(4) Run Figure2.do to generate Figure 2.
(2) Run apsr2011_1_merge.do to generates replication data files (Stata and CSV)
(3) Run apsr2011_2_analysis.do to generate Figures 3-6

* Most Recent Data of Successful Replication: December 1, 2017

* Data Description (See the paper for details; check the do file on how to generate variables used in this paper)

Contains data from apsr2011.dta

  obs:       156,348                          
 vars:            10                          23 Mar 2015 07:14
 size:     4,846,788                          
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
              storage   display    value
variable name   type    format     label      variable label
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
muncode         long    %8.0g                 Municipality Code
muntype         str11   %11s                  Municipality Type
year            int     %9.0g                 Year
month           byte    %9.0g                 Month
move            int     %9.0g                 Moving-in Population
ln_move         float   %9.0g                 ln(move+1)
dd_ln_move      float   %9.0g                 ln(move+1)-ln(move+1, 12month ago)
lt              byte    %9.0g                 Legislative Treatment
et              byte    %9.0g                 Executive Treatment
_merge          byte    %23.0g     _merge     
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorted by:  muncode  month  year
